Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Two Main Questlines

When I decided that the focus of my mod
would be the introduction of two new characters to the Dark
Brotherhood, I knew my mod was going to have two questlines. I could
have had these two characters working together to achieve a single
goal, but I knew their personalities would be very different. That
would mean they would have very independent objectives. From the
start Averna was designed to be the foil to Stabby's Gib. Stabby
would be the silly one cracking jokes all the time, and Averna was
the serious one who was busy doing creepy voodoo magicka.

These two characters had their
questlines developed very differently. The philosophy behind Stabby's
questline was 'addition'. Everything in his story is an addition to
the existing world. He has two unique dungeons (not to mention his
'happy place') and every single character you kill in Stabby's
questline is a person I have added to the existing world of Skyrim. (There is just one notable exception, more on that later)

Averna was developed with a philosophy
of complementing existing assets. Almost all the virgins you kill in
her quests are pre-existing characters. Her quests were an exercise
in Skyrim's Radiant Story system. The first quest picks a random
dungeon with hagravens that you haven't been to, sticks the Quest
Objective in that dungeon and then tells the player to go get it! It
was so much fun to test and debug these quests because they where
different every time! Almost all of Averna's quests are driven by the
Radiant Story System, I really experimented to see what clever
scenarios I could concoct programatically, without having to generate
any new art assets. I am after all, /* just */ a
programmer.

I knew these two
questlines would intertwine eventually, but it wasn't until about 4
months into production that I actually started playing both
questlines at once and seeing how they interacted. That's when the
headaches began. I never wanted to force the player to play the mod
in a certain order or another. But I would have to set some
guidelines in order to keep the system sound and my head in one
piece. Fortunately the plots of both stories came to a single knot.
There is only one spot where you must advance Stabby's questline
before you can advance Averna's. It took a few weeks to untangle the
threads into a single workable knot, but at the end of the project I
was proud of how flexible I had made the game for the player.

About Me

I've worked as a Software Developer on many games, including F.E.A.R. Files, Section 8: Prejudice, and Aliens: Colonial Marines, but this blog is about my mod for Skyrim; The Dark Brotherhood Ressurection: Part 1